As Durrell Bowman (no relation) has noted, the piece “features a substantial amount of electronically generated sounds and sound effects, frequent metrical complexities (28% in asymmetrical meters alone), a large number of tonal areas (eight), a high degree of unison playing (35%), and one of the smallest sung proportions on Rush’s first five studio albums (16%).”

I’m working on a chapter about music in The Simpsons for a book that the independent publisher McFarlane has requested. I presented six conference papers on the topic between 2006 and 2013 and also completed about half of a book on it, so it shouldn’t take take too long! The editor in 2010 co-authored a book for the same press, called: The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield. The new book is intended for undergraduate students and the general public, so it’s a good opportunity to get some more “public music history” out there.

I’ve recently been accepted into Western University’s American-Library-Association-accredited Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program. I will be doing my required courses from May through August this summer, hopefully a co-op work term (paid internship) in a library from September to December, and my electives and major research project (probably on online music delivery) from January through August of 2017. I’m getting student loans lined up for the summer of 2016 and will hopefully also be able to get some in 2017.

Robert Shaw: “It is the nature of music, unlike painting and most of literature, that its final creation is not its original creation. Music needs to be sounded, needs to be sung. It needs to be heard. In this sense the composer literally must leave his work to be finished by others.”

I recently heard someone report another person’s claim that David Bowie had been the greatest genius in the history of music, and someone else replied: “Really, what about Bach? Come on!” I can see the reason for that reaction. However, when I sit at the piano and play and sing through David Bowie’s song “Life on Mars?,” I know what it’s supposed to sound like, because he and his production team went to an awful lot of trouble to record it to sound a certain way. That included parodying the show-tune style of Paul Anka and Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” and featuring keyboardist Rick Wakeman of the progressive rock band Yes on piano. Actually, the melodies, rhythms, chords, and words of the song remain excellent, even though I don’t have an electric guitar, Mellotron, bass, drums, backing vocal, and string section available to accompany me–not to mention Wakeman’s considerable keyboard skills. Choirs do something similar when they rehearse selected choral movements with piano for several months before they ever hear the (piano-less) orchestra and the (choir-less) solo vocal sections. The main difference between Bowie and Bach is that the former gave us “final/original” recorded versions of his music, whereas the latter did not and could not.

I just made an inquiry re Western’s Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) program, in order to introduce myself and to ask about whether they have any preliminary scheduling information for the next several semesters. I’m interested to know what they’ll say, although I expect they’ll mostly just encourage me to apply.

I explained that after my BA in Music and Applied Studies Co-op at the U. of Waterloo and my MA in Musicology at the U. of Toronto, I completed my PhD in Musicology at UCLA and then more recently also a Co-op Certificate in Computer Applications Development at Conestoga College. I also said that in addition to my background in academia (research, teaching), music (e.g., choral singing), and my current work in public music history (books, articles, and conference papers), I have had several part-time jobs involving libraries, including a recordings’ research position at UCLA’s Music Library Special Collections, serving as the choral librarian of the Elora Festival & Singers, and my current volunteering in holds shelving and missing-item traces at the Waterloo Public Library. I also let them know that I once taught a course in popular music & culture for their faculty (FIMS), have developed a number of websites, took a pair of small-business/self-employment courses, and am currently a Visiting Scholar at Conrad Grebel University College at UW.

I wondered if there is an expected schedule yet for the five required courses in Summer 2016 and/or a list of what is expected to be offered in 2016-17? I said that I’m thinking of starting the program this coming summer, doing my second term in Fall 2016 (including some courses online, as I live in Waterloo), then doing a co-op term in Winter 2017 (taking one more course, possibly online, during that term), and completing the program in Summer 2017.

About a week and a half ago, I completed the manuscript for Experiencing Peter Gabriel: A Listener’s Companion. It includes eight chapters, a timeline, an introduction, a conclusion, a list of selected reading and media, and a list of selected listening. The book will be published by Rowman & Littlefield by September of 2016 in print and e-book form and will be available at Amazon and elsewhere.

Experiencing Peter Gabriel: A Listener’s Companion mostly focuses on the songs found on his four primary studio albums: III/Melt (Chapter 4), IV/Security (Chapter 5), So (Chapter 6), and Us (Chapter 7). Chapters 1-2 cover his early years with Genesis (three studio albums per chapter), and Chapter 3 covers his first two solo albums: I/Car and II/Scratch. I’ve covered tours, film scores, other collaborations, cover versions, biographical details, etc. more briefly along the way. Thus, I think I can probably manage to include 2010’s Scratch My Back covers of other people’s songs, 2011’s New Blood orchestral reworkings of his own songs, and 2013’s And I’ll Scratch Yours covers of his songs in the same chapter (Chapter 8) that mainly covers 2002’s Up.